Free Pilgrim by Sara Douglass Page B

fouls the very soil!”
    The horses abruptly halted. They hissed and milled about agitatedly. StarLaughter peered ahead—and laughed.
    Before them stood the strangest man she had ever seen. He wore only a wrap—a wrap that seemed woven of twigs and leaves, for Stars’ sakes!—about his hips, and was otherwise bare-footed and chested. His hair was a wild tangle of faded blonde curls, and two horns arched up from his hairline.
    True, he had the feel of power about him, but StarLaughter did not think it was any match for what her companions wielded.
    To one side and slightly behind the man stood a slender woman, dark haired and serene-faced, wearing a robe with leaping deer about its hemline. Her hand rested on the man’s shoulder.
    StarLaughter’s lip curled. A Bane. How pitiful.
    “Leave this place!” the betwigged man cried, and took a belligerent step forward.
    “And who are you to so demand?” Sheol said pleasantly, but StarLaughter could hear the power that underlay her voice, and she smiled. This man was dead. The only question was who would strike the match.
    “I am Isfrael, Mage-King of the Avar,” the man replied.
    “And the woman?” Sheol asked. It was polite, perhaps, to find out the names of those about to die, but StarLaughter had always thought such niceties well beyond Sheol. Mayhap she was but toying with her prey.
    “I am Shra,” the slender woman said. “Senior Bane among the Avar.”
    “The Avar were ever troublesome,” StarLaughter said. “Grim-faced and petulant-browed. Perhaps it is time they were finally put away.”
    Surprisingly, Isfrael smiled. “You do not like this place, do you. Why is that?”
    Sheol shifted on her horse, and shot a look at Raspu, but when she spoke, her voice was even and calm. “It is a place that has no meaning, Mage-King. I do not like it.”
    “You do not like it, Demon, because you cannot touch it.”
    Sheol literally hissed, then she swivelled about on her horse. “ Rox !”
    The Demon of Terror slowly focused his eyes on the two before him, then his face twisted, and he cried out. “I cannot! The trees protect them!”
    Isfrael smiled, and took another step forward. He raised a hand, and in it StarLaughter saw that he clutched a twig.
    “You ravage freely across the plains, Demons, but know that eventually the very land will rise up against you.”
    “When we are whole, we will tear this land apart, rock by rock, tree by tree!” Sheol said.
    Isfrael’s grin widened…and then he threw the twig at Sheol.
    Sheol knew what that twig was. It was not simply a twig, but the entire shadowy power of the trees that hurtled towards her.
    She screamed in stark terror, reflexively raising both arms before her face, and then her scream turned into a roar and the twig disintegrated the instant before it hit her.
    “ Filth !” she screamed, and she grabbed the mane of her horse and dug her heels cruelly into its flanks.
    The horse leaped forward, bellowing, its teeth bared, its neck arching as if to strike.
    As if from nowhere, another twig appeared in Isfrael’s hand, and this he brandished before him. “Shra! Stand firm!” he cried. “I rely on you now as never before!”
    The horse lunged, snapping at the twig, but it did not seize it.
    “ Filth !” Sheol screamed again, and now Barzula and Mot also drove their creatures forward.
    Unnoticed, the seventh, and riderless, horse, slunk back a few steps until it merged with the night.
    “Shra!” Isfrael murmured. As mighty as he was, he still needed her power to sustain him. The three black beasts roiled before him, snapping and snarling, swiping their claws through the air.
    Yet still they held back, so that their teeth and claws came within a finger span of Isfrael, but did not actually touch him.
    “The very land will rise up against you!” Isfrael shouted one more time, and at his shout the trees themselves screamed.
    Shra staggered, almost unable to control the power that Isfrael was using. She